


Butterfly Wings

by Evie_adams273



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, No trigger warnings, Post-Canon, Questioning, Trans, analysis of myself, distancing myself from my experience to understand it better, exploration of personal experience, i don't actually headcanon this but I just needed a canvas to paint on, non-binary, not beta'd because i can't be bothered, personal feelings so do not attack me, please don't tell my parents, trying to subtly come out, written for me not you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:55:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27702404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evie_adams273/pseuds/Evie_adams273
Summary: The youngest Potter child ends up in several months of gender questioning, and the results ensue, to some degree.
Kudos: 7





	Butterfly Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Another piece written for me, and based off personal experience because I only seem to understand what's going on like this. 
> 
> This isn't beta'd but I've only had one stim thing while writing. Focus has been decent.
> 
> I don't know why I called this Butterfly Wings. Just seemed like the right title.

**_She/Her_ **

Lily sits in the park for several hours, her mind flying through the same ring of thoughts. She doesn’t like the idea of ‘being masculine’, and the thought of he/him pronouns don’t sit well with her. But at the same time, why does she think she is a girl? Apart from having been told and treated as such for her entire life.

On the other hand, what does tie her to ‘womanhood’. Being ‘female’ doesn’t necessarily connect in her head. Then again, no words connected to gender seemed to make anything emotional spark in her mind.

These thoughts circle her head for three hours. She pushes them away, noting her general detachment from reality.

Still, it can’t hurt to start trying things out. Slowly. Without telling anyone else. Because she doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions and then have to go back. She doesn’t want to contribute to any possible argument that trans people were faking.

She could try some new clothes at some point. She likes her long hair, or she tells herself that, so she won’t cut it. The last time she had it short, she didn’t like it much. But she could experiment with clothes.

She’s close to growing out of a lot of her clothes anyway. Maybe, next week, she can just ask her mum for a bit of money to go and get some new clothes, and she can look for the things she genuinely thinks she’ll be comfortable in. She’s liked the look of long skirts for a while now, and she can get some ‘men’s’ clothes.

Gendered clothes have always been weird anyway. They get weirder when she manages to go shopping and realises that men’s clothing is just so much more convenient.

She hates everything in the women’s section. It’s all stuff for outfits, for coordinated situations that expect you to have twenty different versions of each thing, because nothing matches beyond a few very select examples. Still, she gets some long skirts, and some trousers. And one shirt.

And then she wanders downstairs.

Downstairs, everything works. It’s plain t-shirts, comfy and easy to size herself against. She picks three shirts and a hoodie. It’s only a week before she wishes she got more.

It takes three weeks for her to stop wearing the comfy shirts on an almost daily basis. She puts on one of her older shirts and is immediately appalled at how low the neckline is, comparatively. She sticks to the comfy shirts after that.

The ideas of gender still float around her head, but they don’t make her uncomfortable or scared anymore. She’s put it down to being detached from herself as a whole, still coping from nearly losing her brother.

She considers trying to kick-start things by chest-binding, but she decides against it. Binders are expensive, especially if you want a decent one, and she doesn’t know if she does want it or not. Getting it across from America is just a pain of an idea and she can live without.

It’s one night near the end of the summer when she sees something on how to bind safely without a binder. She tries it, out of sheer curiosity because it can’t hurt, can it? Just to try and kick-start a reaction from her brain to try and point her in the right direction.

She doesn’t like it. It doesn’t feel right. It’s too constrictive, and she’s trying to do it without alerting anyone else in the house. Which is quite hard when she has to run in and out of the bathroom.

She doesn’t like it. And she panics. Because what does she do with that conclusion? Nothing makes sense but she doesn’t hate her body but she no longer ‘feels’ like a girl. She’s almost accepted, inside her head, that she’s not a girl. But she doesn’t have proof for the outside world.

She needs proof.

She freaks out for the rest of the evening, pacing around the kitchen until she goes to bed and just tries to put it out of mind. When she wakes up the next morning, she’s okay. Until the afternoon when it happens again. This is when she makes the decision to cut her hair. It’s meant to kickstart something else.

She asks for the haircut the next day. She books it for Saturday evening and spends a long time trying to find specific pictures to take to them. She doesn’t want to have it look as bad as it did before. She wants this to work.

She sees her friend the day before. They talk about it for a while, and she’s a little more encouraged by her friend saying that, whatever Lily decides, is just what will happen. A name change means a name change. No questions. A pronoun change means a pronoun change. No questions.

The euphoria Lily gets after the haircut sends her to the moon and back. She has slight second thoughts after it wears off, but she still loves it. It suits her, and she gets excited for the beginning of school.

She tells a few friends at school what’s going on. They’re all very supportive. They all understand in some way or other. The perks of being in the gay friendship group, Lily supposes.

It’s a week into term when Lily decides to order a binder.

* * *

**_She/They_ **

Getting hold of the binder proves harder than expected. She saves for the month, and then they order it at the beginning of October. She orders it to her Muggle friend, asking them to deliver it to her house, claiming it’s books, so that her parents can owl it to her. They develops a multitude of cover stories.

Between ordering the binder and it turning up, Lily ends up aggressively hating being perceived as a girl. But that discomfort disappears back to an understanding that she was assigned female at birth, so it’s to be expected. They start accidentally misgendering themselves again.

In the end, the binder turns up during the half term and Lily ends up in the dormitory bathroom trying to squeeze into it. They get it the wrong way around the first time, but at least she now knows she won’t dislocate her shoulders trying to get it on or off.

When it’s on properly, they realise it’s probably a little big for them, but they still love it. Their chest is flat. It looks odd. But it’s comfy and it feels nice. They follow their friend’s instructions on timestamps for building up to it, except for one bad night, where it’s a distraction from doing something worse.

It’s a bit big for her, so it won’t hurt.

They start to wear the binder regularly, and she starts considering her name more deeply. It’s been a consideration for a few months now, but she can’t think of a name that she feels connected to. There’s nothing particularly ‘her’. So they stick to Lily around school. They try a few different names with friends. Avery. Dani. They like Avery more, because it’s been used more before, but none of the three names feel right.

She struggles to test pronouns because no one uses pronouns around her. Except her family, and she isn’t telling them. Most people stick to ‘she’. It’s binary. People prefer it because it fits in the boxes.

The first time someone else refers to Lily with ‘they’, they get hit with a huge wave of euphoria and end up running around the dormitory. They thank the person later, because the feeling cannot be overstated and it gives her a bit of hope that, perhaps, things will start to fall into place.

She gives it time. Like they have for weeks. Time to see if anything happens, and just wait for something to change. It doesn’t. So they continue in limbo.

It just becomes part of their life.

The binder becomes a comfort over a necessity. They don’t have chest dysphoria, they don’t think, but she hates the sensory side of wearing bras, even sports ones, so she sticks with her binder during the day. And she likes the flatness.

Admittedly, considering her chest when they don’t have the binder on does cause a feeling of ‘does not compute’. Then again, the idea of a flat chest without the binder doesn’t really ‘compute’ either.

Once or twice, they try to cut their own hair, because it’s getting too long and it makes her anxious. The second time she does it, she trims the back. It goes shorter than she was expecting, but she loves it. Between the music she’s got on, and looking in the mirror, the euphoria hits and she loves the feeling.

She returns to the mirror with her binder and that’s when things take a proper change.

For the first time, they look in the mirror and realise that not only do they actually feel like it’s them looking back at them (depersonalisation is a bitch), but they look masc and they know that’s them.

And they like it. They look like a guy and it’s a great look.

* * *

**_They/Them_ **

They scream it from the Astronomy Tower first. They lean over the edge and scream the words to the world, because they don’t know how else they can start this part of the journey.

‘My name is Avery Potter and I use they/them pronouns.’

There’s more nuance behind it really. Things about being agender, maybe. But people don’t need to know that. For the moment, Avery can be happy with people using ‘they’ and this new name. This name that is starting to fit a little more.

The doubts come in tenfold after they scream it from the Tower. Avery pushes them back because the doubts are only there because anxiety. No, this doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s going to last, but then again, neither does the idea of presenting as solely ‘female.’

Avery knows they can work this out and make the things they’re used to change. Once that happens, they’ll know. Really know.

At least, know a little more.

It’s going to be a long journey.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, this doesn't come close to summing up how I'm feeling. I've missed out months about names and also possible neurodivergency and stuff, but this is just a quiet piece for me to sum up some feelings while projecting. It's also proof I can write 1600 words in an hour if I actually try.
> 
> Thanks for reading  
> Kudos and comments much appreciated  
> Twitter: @evie_adams273
> 
> Fuck JKR. And TERFs.  
> Black Lives Matter


End file.
